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[timothy]

just a thought for a cheap birds eye view of the milky way. Land a camera on one that comes around every few years or so like comet temple thats orbit takes it above and below the plane of the milky way and when it comes back around the camera could send all the data back to earth and we'll see what we get.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

What an excellent idea!

A wide FOV and fast lens would be in order. No need for continued propulsion, as we would get a free ride. The only problem to over come would be for a steady and long lasting power supply, as I don't think solar would be a logical choice.

It can also measure various of other space phenomenon like solar wind density, fluctuating magnetic fields and the like.

An Earth crossing astreoid or Apollo object, would be ideal.

We will call it: Project Tiny Tim... ;D

[Maddad]

We don't get the advantage of hitching a ride for free. The energy needed to match speed with the coment is the same as the energy needed to send it to the comet's aphelion.

A fission source for the power supply seems like a good idea. The more power you get from the fissionable material, the shorter the half-life. The device shouldn't need a lot of power, so a fissionable material with a long half life would do.

The kind of orbit though is a matter for considerable debate. An Apollo object, an Earth orbit crossing asteroid, has a period of just several years. We'd get our data back maybe before Hubble goes down. Long period comets from the Oort Cloud, at the other extreme, can make us wait thousands of years.

Probably the short period Earth crossers are best for this purpose. They'd get up to about 4 astronomical units out from the Sun. While Comets in the Oort Cloud get out to a whopping 100,000 AU, 25,000 times further away, it doesn't get us significantly closer to the stars. The stars would still be just a pinpoint of light, unresolvable into a disc. Even the closest star, Proxima Centauri, would be another 300,000 AU or so. The galactic core would be 20,000 times as far away as the Oort Cloud, as good as being exactly as far away as Earth. The advantage of being away from Earth is not that you're closer to what you're looking at, but you're further from light polution. For those purposes, the asteroid belt is as good as the oort cloud.

[timothy]

HMMMM seems that it's not as good an idea as I first thought. Might make a good sci-fi movie though. Astronauts fly a hubble size scope out to meet a comet from the Oort cloud. Land on the comet and fasten the scope to the comet and take off. Then we skip to the year 3505 and a little red light starts flashing on the personal computer of the ceo of nasa. The monitor comes on automatically, his eyes widen as he reads

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

You know Tim...

All V ger wanted to do...was to touch the creator.

[timothy]

Ok now I remember that movie. Spock must have done a mind meld with me.
I thought I would leave the story open ended and we could have one of those never ending stories.

Maddad
That was a wonderfull explanation of how far my cometcam idea would actually get us out in space. I was thinking that a comet would get us out to the halo of the milkyway and get an actual picture of the milkyway from the outside. I struggle at times with the vastness of time and space at times, just like sometimes I catch myself thinking the moon orbits the earth once a day